PHOTO PROVIDED / THE VILLAGE REPORTER
TRAINING … Members of the Williams County Sheriff’s Office dive team stand in front of a pond following a training session.
By: John Fryman
THE VILLAGE REPORTER
john@thevillagereporter.com
The Williams County Sheriff’s Office has had a diving team since the 1970s, and the department secured a $130,000 grant to expand the capabilities and provide the best service to county residents.
The grant comes from the Department of Homeland Security and is managed by the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.
“It’s basically a federal grant, but it’s managed by the Ohio Emergency Management Agency,” said Ben Baldwin of the Williams County Sheriff’s Office. “It’s a grant they offer every year. It’s also core functioned, and it’s part of the National Preparedness System.”
One of the major goals of the grant is to build, sustain, and deliver core capabilities that support the National Preparedness Goal.
Baldwin pointed out that the importance of the grant is the sustainment of specialty teams, which also include HAZMAT teams, dive teams, and explosive or bomb teams.
“Because the county had a dive team, I was able to help write the grant,” said Baldwin. “The whole goal was to revamp our dive team program. We have had a dive team in Williams County since the late 1970s. The gentleman who was a part of implementing started it for a reason.”
Since then, the Sheriff’s Office has sustained a dive team over the years. “Our numbers have started to dwindle, and when I saw that the grant would help fund our dive team, I wrote it,” admitted Baldwin.
One of his top goals after obtaining the grant was to fully equip and train ten members. To do so, it would take just less than $130,000 to accomplish it.
Once the department was awarded the grant, Baldwin was able to train and equip members with top-of-the-line diving equipment, along with standardized training that is recognized nationally.
Members of the Williams County Sheriff’s Office Diving Team include Baldwin, Scott Shuping, Kyle Miller, Brandon Willis, Tyler Borton, Chris Suydam, Steve Mendez, Josh Elliott, Beau Zuver, and Adam Helms.
“Several of our members were already certified divers and were already a part of the dive team,” Baldwin said. “One of the things this did was made everything equal.”
Other members selected were a part of the public safety community who had made it known they had shown an interest. We talked to those individuals, and then we picked from there,” said Baldwin.
The dive team had been comprised of basically volunteers in the community. They had their own level of training and were using their own equipment, so it wasn’t standardized.
“One individual may have one type of apparatus in certain types of training, or another individual may have something completely different,” commented Baldwin. “This now (ensures) everybody has the exact same level of training, and everybody has the same equipment.”
After the diving team was chosen, getting the equipment was the next step for the department.
“We’ve worked with several different vendors to acquire the equipment,” said Baldwin. “I talked to other public safety dive teams and went to look at equipment and what they’re using. We were able to put a package together, and then the same thing as the training.”
By getting a first-hand look at what other dive teams were doing, Baldwin was able to determine how the dive team wanted to operate, when it should begin, and what training its members should receive.
“All of our divers are open water certified,” said Baldwin. “There are other certifications as well, including advanced open water, dry suit, full face mask, and public safety certified.”
Those five certifications mentioned above are what the department saw as important elements for each of the divers to have.
After receiving the grant in late 2023, the department began its training in the fall of 2024 and continued through this spring and fall to complete the training.
“It’s been a year and a half in the making,” said Baldwin. “We have additional training already planned for next year.”
The diving team has already taken part of its training in several bodies of water, including the Williams County Family YMCA Pool, Gilboa Quarry, and even a few divers have actually gone up to Lake Superior, along with lakes, ponds, and reservoirs.
Source: The Village Reporter
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